38 GREAT MEN OF SCIENCE 



Statements, or of a consideration of reason in his favour: but 

 instruments of torture appear to have been ready to hand 

 during his examination. In any case, Galileo left Rome as 

 the prisoner of the Inquisition, and remained so until his 

 death. After some time, however, he was allowed to live 

 in his country house Arcetri in the neighbourhood of Flor- 

 ence; but the Florentine Inquisitor kept him under continual 

 close observation. He was almost entirely confined to the 

 house and could only receive visitors who were approved by 

 his gaolers. 



The public effect was that of complete paralysis. No 

 protest on the part of science, even from the universities, 

 is recorded by history. 



During his imprisonment, Galileo wrote his second and 

 last chief work, the Conversations concerning Two New 

 Sciences {Discorsi, of which we have already given a partial 

 account above). It contains all his investigations of the laws 

 of motion, which had occupied him almost without inter- 

 ruption since his youth, and which made him the founder of 

 this science. He gives for the first time a complete statement 

 of, and argument for, the results, and develops a large num- 

 ber of new conclusions. Here we find the law of free fall, 

 of falling on the inclined plane with corresponding experi- 

 ments -the times being measured by the flow of water, since 

 there were still no good clocks - and further, detailed treat- 

 ment of the motion of projectiles, the laws of the pendulum, 

 and the consideration of many other important phenomena 

 of motion. The printing of the work was prevented by the 

 prohibition of the Inquisition in all Catholic countries; 

 but by friendly endeavours, the publication was arranged 

 through a Dutch bookseller, though the fact that this was 

 Galileo's desire had to be kept secret. 



When the work appeared, Galileo was 74 years of age. 

 A year before that he had already become blind after a long 

 and painful disease of the eyes. Petitions to the Pope to 



